World-renowned chef Dominique Crenn reopened its 3 Michelin-starred restaurant Atelier Crenn in San Francisco for indoor dining with its new hospital-grade UV-C disinfection system.

Successful chef Dominique Crenn has taken hygiene protocols one step further to protect the health of its guests in the indoor area and reopened the 3 Michelin-starred Atelier Crenn with a brand new hospital-grade UV-C disinfection system. “I went through cancer in 2018 and 2019, so I was so interested about how clean UV-C was, and I talked to my doctor a lot,” Crenn told SFGate. “A friend of my business partner came out with this technology, and I talked to him and I was like, oh my God, this is exactly what we need.”

In addition to the standard safety protocols administered in the restaurant, including customer temperature checks, spaced tables, hand sanitiser, masks and health questionnaires, Crenn will also run the new device, known as the Arc, at night to disinfect the dining room after service.

Supplied by San Francisco biosafety company R-Zero, the sleek, six-and-a-half feet tall, portable device is billed “to disinfect 99.99% of surface and airborne pathogens in a 1,000 sq. ft. room, in just 7 minutes.” However, there is currently limited published data about the wavelength, dose, and duration of UV-C radiation required to inactivate the SARS-CoV-2 virus according to the FDA.

A unit costs between $60,000 and $125,000, but is just $17 a day for businesses to lease. “For me, it was also important to use technology that a lot of restaurants can afford, and not going to a place where it’s thousands of dollars,” Crenn continues. “The industry must find ways to reinvent, including redesigning operations to make them safe. As a restaurant owner, it’s my duty to make sure we have a safe environment.”